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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]By 9th grade, all of modern social life is on the phone. I'll ask my HS DD if she wants to meet her friends at the mall. Round 'em up, I'll drop you off for a few hours. She'll say, "Why?" She's been talking all morning with her friends by text, so she's all caught up on their latest.

Plus, getting her friends' parents to agree to allow their 15 and 16-year-olds to spend the afternoon together walking around the mall would require three days and five committees to discuss, and in the end it wouldn't happen, anyway. It's just a waste of time trying to get parents to agree to it.

So it's a combo of tech use AND helicopter parenting not giving teens any space to do the things that their parents so freely did as teens. Their phones are their social life lines. That's just the way it is now.[/quote]

ohhhhh don't get me started on the helicopter parenting. This is the biggest part of why these suburban kids are phone addicts! They are not allowed any independence at all. My daughter is happy to put her phone away, wanted to go to the smithsonian on the metro with friends this summer, and the parents just wouldn't allow it. Insane.

FWIW my kids -- four tweens and teens, all have phones -- prefer to actually speak to friends and FaceTime or Skype whenever that's possible. The oldest says he only really texts for quick functional communication (e.g. where are you, what time is practice.) The next oldest has notifications turned off for everything and his friends know to actually call if they want to get in touch.

I do monitor total screen time and break it down by app and I've found that after an initial climb and peak, they each use their phone in general and social media in particular less with each passing semester. 
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